1. Technical Field
The invention relates to chat messaging. More particularly, the invention relates to automatically and manually prioritizing and highlighting chat messages on a computer display device, so that the user's attention is drawn to particular content or senders.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Chat rooms have become a common form of communication, not only for social users but also to foster rapid, networked information sharing and discussion in large private and government organizations. Chat rooms have proven particularly useful for disseminating and discussing rapidly changing real-time situations, as evidenced by their widespread adoption in military command centers.
A typical chat session consists of textual messages from a sender to one or more recipients, who view both sent and received messages in a chat client that provides a “chat room” window on a computer screen. Typically, a message is composed and then sent using a mouse click or key press, after which time it becomes visible to all users logged into the particular chat room. As new messages appear and the chat window fills with text, the oldest messages are scrolled or otherwise displaced from the window.
It is not uncommon for a command center technician or operator to have several chat windows open at a given time, each monitoring a separate session with its own participants and context. The constant flow of textual information in simultaneous multiple sessions makes it difficult and time-consuming for a single user to effectively monitor incoming messages and determine which, if any, merit further thought and response. Without reading through all chat threads in their entirety, an operator may miss relevant and important incoming messages, making it likely that important information will be missed when the operator's attention is pulled away from a specific chat room to perform some other mission function.
Limited attempts have been made to alleviate this problem by highlighting specific categories or sources of information. For example, certain chat clients, such as Chocoa (Fujitsu Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) or MITRE's Dynamic Chat Manager (MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass. and McLean, Va.) allow users to specify keywords that are then highlighted whenever they arise in a session. The latter program also highlights chat rooms with high activity level and messages from members of a user's social network, as derived from the frequency of interaction between pairs of users.